Our Voice: China seeks solar advantage with silicon-dumping claim

In a ludicrous case of the pot calling the kettle black, a group of Chinese companies is accusing U.S. companies, including Hemlock Semiconductor Corp., of flooding China with cheap stuff.

The claim would be hilarious if it didn’t involve thousands of jobs, and the future of a fledgling solar industry here.

We can’t take it seriously. Not after U.S. solar panel manufacturers had earlier complained that China’s solar panel makers were “dumping” their product on the U.S. market for below the cost of making them.

That, in a nutshell, is not free trade.

And that’s what the China Photovoltaic Industry Alliance has claimed HSC and others are doing in China with the polycrystalline silicon that they make. HSC alone makes more than a third of the world’s supply.

This dumping claim from China is just tit for tat in an uneasy trade relationship between two of the world’s largest economic powers.

We might take the claim from overseas more seriously if the Chinese had even one leg to stand on.

For years and years, U.S. companies and our federal government have accused China of a raft of free trade violations, only to have them pushed aside like the ocean’s waves parted by fleets of Chinese ships carrying containers of made-in-China materials to our shores.

For quite a few years now, Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, has pushed a plan to establish an office of trade prosecutor to follow up on trade complaints, investigate them and prosecute infringements in world courts.

Stabenow and others have repeatedly accused China of manipulating its currency so that its goods are cheaper here, and our products are more expensive over there.

China pays lip service to accusations from the U.S. that its companies steal our ideas, our intellectual property from music to electronics, and capitalize on them.

The list of what’s lopsided in trade between China and the U.S. could go on and on and on.

But the bottom line is that in the U.S. our government for the most part forces us to follow labor laws, environmental regulations, to honor patents and copyrights. To our detriment with trading partners who don’t play by the rules, American companies are forced to conduct a fair game.

That’s the tilted playing field that has U.S. companies crying foul over competition from China. Put us on the same, level terrain with any competitor, and U.S. companies are up to the challenge of who will become king of hill.

Quite honestly, we don’t know if China’s claims of U.S. silicon dumping on their country hold any water.

Frankly, we don’t care. That is, until China, one of our nation’s largest trading partners, comes clean and addresses complaints piled up against it for lo these many years.

In all likelihood, China’s accusation is just so much bluster in a solar energy market that appears poised to explode.

China and the U.S. are neck-and-neck now in installing solar power sources. According to Greentechsolar, which first reported China’s silicon claims, the U.S. in September had installed 1 gigawatt worth of solar energy units nationwide; China is expected to reach that milestone very soon.

That’s a competitive terrain in which each side will seek to gain any advantage.

It’s a playing field that has Saginaw County and Michigan smack dab in the middle, with HCS based here, Dow Chemical Co. in Midland cranking out solar shingles and companies waiting in the wings to jump into what is becoming known as the Solar Valley.